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The 15 best albums ever

gerlando

Prog Rocker
Just my opinion (in alphabetical order):

Beatles - Sgt. Pepper
Genesis - Selling England by the Pound
IQ - Ever
Iron Butterfly - Inagaddadavida
King Crimson - In the court of the Crimson King
Led Zeppelin - IV
Marillion - Marbles
Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells (Hergest Ridge)
Peter Gabriel - III
Pink Floyd - TDSOTM
Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet
Radiohead - The Bends
Tangerine Dream - Ricochet
Van der Graaf Generator - Pawn Hearts
Yes - Close to the edge.

Runners-up:
The Beatles - Abbey Road
David Bowie - Heroes
David Sylvian - Gone to Earth
Dead can Dance - Into the Labyrinth
Deep Purple - Made in Japan
The Doors - LA Woman
ELP - Pictures at an Exhibition
Genesis - Foxtrot
Gong - You
Japan - Oil on Canvas
Kansas - Two for the show
Kate Bush - The Dreaming/Hounds of Love
Kevin Ayers - Joy of a Toy/Shooting at the Moon
King Crimson - Island/Larks tongues in aspic
Pink Floyd - Wish you were here
The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the infinite sadness
The Smiths - The Queen is dead
The Soft Machine - The Soft Machine
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Tangerine Dream - Phaedra/Rubycon
This Mortal Coil - Filigree & Shadow/Blood
Traffic - John Barleycorn must die
Ultravox - Rage in Eden
The Who - Live at Leeds
Yes - Fragile
 
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I'd only identify five of those if you played them to me!

And my collection is around 3800 albums in digital plus quite a few I only have on vinyl.

Maybe I'm wrong but there doesn't seem to be anything recent in that list...
 
I’ve never heard of 7 of the albums there!

Have to say, SEBTP is one of the least enjoyable albums I’ve ever heard (along with Joni Mitchell’s Blue).

Mind you, I’m sure many prog fans would find eg. my Fred Astaire and Mel Tormé albums equally dull. Might have to add my own list later today.
 
I have 12 of the 15 and 16 of the runners-up. All of them on vinyl. The IQ is the only one I've never heard of. I really must be an old fart.
 
Just Seems like a big list of albums I have - you can pick 10 or 15 and at some point they will be my top 10 or 15 favs - nice list though :cool:
 
I would just list all Lou Reed-era Velvets albums, all Stooges/Iggy & The Stooges albums, plus as many Half Man Half Biscuit albums as needed to make it up to 15 (8, if my maths is correct, which seems unlikely).
 
No jazz, no classical? Mmm.
New title suggestion: the 15 best POP/ROCK albums.
That said, good choices altogether. :)
Nothing that is not in English either, how parochial :)

Reminds me of my long dead father going to the best Indian restaurant in the area and asking for sausage, egg and chips... which was not on the menu.
 
Some of those are available in quadrophonic - Pink Floyd, Tubular Bells, Genesis, Yes...
If you've never heard quad, it is a gigantic leap forward in clarity.
Even a a basic AV processor with some rear speakers that don't match your main speakers will transform your perception of the recordings.

Tubular Bells was always a mushy sound, until you hear it in Quad - the clarity of no longer being compressed into two channels is awesome - particularly if, like me, Tubular Bells has always been about and a known sound.
Pink Floyds releases in Quad bring a whole new meaning to them.
Genesis and Yes benefit the same but to a lesser extent.
 
Guys, the OP has given you his 15 greatest albums, there is no right or wrong here...

That’s a given. The thread title and opening ‘Just my opinion’ made me laugh though, as what follows is just a longer way of saying ‘I like prog’.

Ok, the Beatles are so out of it that year they finally let Paul record ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’, but even Sgt. Pepper is a forerunner to prog, isn’t it?
 
Tubular Bells was always a mushy sound, until you hear it in Quad - the clarity of no longer being compressed into two channels is awesome - particularly if, like me, Tubular Bells has always been about and a known sound.

I don't know what versions of TB you've heard got but it's never suffered from a "mushy" sound to my ears. Some of the '74 pressings were poor due to poor quality vinyl but most of the releases are OK. The biggest crime to my ears was the later remixes (from the 25th anniversary Simon Hayworth onwards) where they tied too hard to clean the sound up. Sure, the kick drum in the 'Caveman' section got a bit more clarity but the opening sequence lost some of its charm when what was a unique timbre got magically resolved to a very distinct piano / glockenspiel duet.

Mike's later 5.1 mix isn't up to snuff either. In fact none of the 'Deluxe' edition surround mixes work well at all.

Hergest Ridge on the other hand has a vey dense sound.
 
That's interesting that we've got completely different opinions!
I'm not sure which versions I've had but I've had various since it's initial release.
Maybe I'm referring to the spaciousness of instruments rather than the absolute individual sounds.
I find that two channels is not enough to give all those individual instrument recordings, which have been bounced down onto two tracks, the clarity that they deserve.
 
That’s a given. The thread title and opening ‘Just my opinion’ made me laugh though, as what follows is just a longer way of saying ‘I like prog’.

Ok, the Beatles are so out of it that year they finally let Paul record ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’, but even Sgt. Pepper is a forerunner to prog, isn’t it?

Personally there are five of his favourites I would not put in the prog camp, but I guess that's just down to personal choice. PG III is definitely not prog, but it is one of the top 15 albums of all time so fair play to him!
 


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